Alone Inside
by Joriel
Summary: This was part of a series I had done and managed to lose, but since it was a strong Wufie peice, I figured I would keep it and display it here. : )


Outside the cozy mountain retreat the snow fell softly to the ground, blanketing the world in a fluffy, glittering fantasy land. The snow muffled most sounds, wrapping the cottage in a safe cocoon of isolation. The mountains were colder than the five boys inside the cabin were used to, but cleaner than anything they had ever seen. That clean even went so far as to wash their souls somewhat.  
  
The five boys were gathered in the recreation room of Quatre's home, enjoying an unusual amount of down time they had been given. Lately their performances had been off, careless little slips showing up even in Heero and Trowa's work. Their superiors felt that they needed a break to recover from the inevitable battle fatigue and exhaustion of living on the run. So here they were, on vacation.  
  
Duo and Heero sat on the floor in front of a huge tv blowing each other to smithereens in one of Quatre's vidoe games. It had taken nearly three hours of cajoling on Duo's part to get Heero to take up the controller, but once he had Heero was hooked. In another corner Quatre and Trowa were practicing some ancient Christmas music Duo had produced from somewhere and unusually seriously asked them if they would try playing it. Quatre, ever sweet and eager to please, nodded with a pleading glance at Trowa, who merely picked up his flute and read the sheet music. Wufei sat alone on the sofa, ignored and mostly forgotten, just watching the other four.  
  
It was the way his life had to be.  
  
"Gotcha!" Duo cried gleefully, earning him one of those glances from Heero that was an enigmatic mix of annoyance and amusement. Duo just grinned back at him, as insanely happy as ever. But there was a sparkle in his eyes that showed only when he looked at Heero. Wufei often wondered what those two really were to each other, but never felt comfortable enough to ask. Sides, Heero would probably spout out his favorite line, "I'm going to kill you" if he did, then try to make good on it.  
  
The music stopped for a moment as Quatre faltered over some notes, and his head bent close to Trowa's as they discussed the best way to handle the passage Quatre didn't like. Those two were easier to understand. It had startled him at first, the love that began to clearly shine between the other two pilots, but after thinking about it he couldn't help but admit they belonged together.  
  
Wufei watched the two pairs closely, determined to ignore the wistful envy in his heart. No, not for him these cozy friendships and love. He was the outsider, by his own choice.  
  
Duo cried out again, this time in dismay as he stared sadly at his 'destroyed' fighter plane. Surprisingly Heero reached out and briefly squeezed his wrist before pulling back his hand. Heero rarely showed any kind of kindness to anyone, especially Duo, in public. Wufei smiled slightly, happy for the American pilot that so adored Heero. The music started up again, going over the same passage a few times til Trowa and Quatre felt they had the spirit of it understood.  
  
Wufei sighed almost silently, knowing that the others would not hear or see the tiny lapse in his armor. He wondered if a small part of him wanted them to notice. Some small, lonely part of his heart deep under the gundamian prison it was locked into.  
  
He got up then, spouting out some nonsense about needing to worship and care for Nataku, not even really sure what he had said.  
  
"There he goes again," Duo commented, not taking his eyes off the video game in progress, "Wufei and his lover, the Gundam!" Duo laughed softly, Heero told him to  
  
shut up and concentrate.  
  
Wufei winced slightly at the words, but hid it well as he left the happy scene.  
  
Quatre put down his violin and stared after him, uncertain what he had just seen in his fellow pilot's face. It had almost looked like... pain? regret? He met Trowa's eyes, shaking his head in reply to the silent concern there, and lifted his violin again, wondering.  
  
  
  
Wufei entered the huge cavern under the cabin that they had hidden the Gundam's in. He stood silently for a long time just staring at Nataku. Bitterly he let the thought of what the others would see if they saw him just then enter his mind. 'There he is again, lost in worship of that piece of metal!' or 'Crazy Wufei, adoring his metal love, does he think it can love him back?'.  
  
He wondered what they would think if they knew what he really felt when he stared at Nataku so. What he really saw, what she really meant to him. The mixture of, yes, love, and resentment that he felt for the machine. It was his freedom, his only friend. It was his prison, his jailor.  
  
Sighing, he went about cleaning it. He ran his hands over the cold gundanium, wondering for the thousandth time what it would feel like to have Heero's brief touches, or Quatre's adoring hugs bestowed upon him. What would it feel like to be able to do more than yell "Woman, are you paying attention?" to the golden eyed assassin that was sometimes assigned to join them on missions. Riei. Her name echoed painfully in his heart. She usually ignored him as icily as Heero. For good reason. He patronized her, but deep inside knew she was probably the stronger warrior than he! But that was how he wanted it...no, not wanted. It was the way it had to be.  
  
He knew what the others thought. How they felt about him.  
  
Wufei was strange. Wufei was cold and mean. Wufei was boring, crazy, irritating. Wufei was just like his Gundam, a machine. Unimportant, pretentious, arrogant.  
  
But Wufei was none of these things. And they didn't know how he felt about them.  
  
Sometimes he had the insane urge to stop yelling about justice, or Nataku, or about any of the other countless things he said designed to irritate and alienate the others. Sometimes he wanted to hug Quatre, offer him comfort like a brother when the guilt got bad and showed in those innocent blue eyes. He wanted to be sitting on the floor next to Duo playing video games too, laughing and joking with the pilot who he privately found very funny. Duo needed a friend sometimes, when Heero was being especially cold, and he wished he could be that for him, instead of leaving the poor American to spend three hours trying to cajole Heero into doing something with him. He wanted to be able to go to the circus with Trowa and enjoy all the sights and sounds, watch his friend perform and applaud, instead of ridiculing it all the time. He wanted to be able to talk to Heero, and maybe somehow help him to know life. Sometimes his heart ached for Heero when the others were discussing issues other than missions and war, even Wufei himself, and Heero was sitting silently on the outside, unable to join in for lack of understanding of  
  
anything else. He wanted to be able to tell Riei that he thought about her all the time, that she wasn't just some "Woman!", that she was brave and strong and important to him. He wanted to see if just maybe, by some miracle, she would let him hold her hand, just once.  
  
But he couldn't do any of these things. Not anymore.  
  
Once, he had been very different. He had been quiet, more inclined to study and learn than to fight. He had delighted in his friends and family, in the countless ways that he touched their lives, and they touched his. And later the complicated love/hatred between him and his wife. He sat back for a moment, remembering what it had been like to talk to people, instead of at them. To touch and be touched. To be wanted, liked, even loved.  
  
Another lifetime. Another Wufei. The real one, before this impostor of himself took over his mind.  
  
He did love his Gundam. Because it was the only thing that he could love. It was safe. If it was damaged, it could be fixed. They had not been able to fix his wife. If it was destroyed, it could be rebuilt. They had not been able to rebuild his dead family. But it wasn't the machine he loved. It was just the only thing that he could allow his pained heart to embody with the spirits of the people he did love. To him, Nataku was the ultimate dream of living again. It contained a little bit of the essence of each person he cared for, and by lavishing care on it, he was showing them in his silent way that he did care, did love them. It was his only way of not being totally alone in the darkness that his life had become. The endless night that was his world.  
  
Tears formed in his black eyes that he resolutely forced back. It was not for honor or his masculine pride that he refused to give in to the tears, it was simply that they did no good. They merely reminded him that he had no one to hold him when he cried, as he often saw Trowa hold Quatre, and even once saw Heero take Duo tightly in an embrace when Duo broke down. He usually only felt worse when he was done, not better, so he refused to do it anymore. Well, usually, he admitted sadly. Sometimes life just got to him.  
  
It was war. People were dying everyday, either under Oz's or his own hand. Better to love a thing that could be rebuilt. Better to hold yourself apart from the others. Less hurt all around when one of them was killed. No more of that hot, eternal pain, only the dull ache he knew now. Any more of the other kind would destroy him, he knew this.  
  
"Wufei!" Quatre's voice cheerful voice broke the silence, startling him. Wufei silently cursed himself as weak for the relief he felt that his thoughts had been broken.  
  
"I'm telling you, we're wasting out time, Quatre!" Duo piped up. "It's already a miracle we got Heero going, and now you want two? There is no way Wu's gonna go!"  
  
"Wufei, baka," he yelled down deliberately, his tone falsely belligerent. There was no way he was going to admit he liked the sound of the nickname on the American's lips.  
  
"Wufei, we're going sledding! Would you please come with us?" Quatre called up, smiling at him.  
  
"I must worship my Nataku now!" he called back imperiously, ignoring the ache of longing in his chest. Inside he laughed at himself. 'It's not Nataku you are going to  
  
worship, it is them, the very people below you inviting you to be with them,' his mind taunted him.  
  
"Oh let him be, I want to hit the slopes!" a soft, feminine, achingly familiar voice joined the crowd. Riei? When had she come? A deeper pain stabbed at his heart. A fantasy of himself on a sled speeding down a mountain with Riei wrapped securely in his arms rose up in his mind. She was laughing delightedly, like the child she sometimes appeared to be, clinging to him for stability and warmth. In reality, she was standing in the hanger below him, looking coolly up at him, indifferent, apart. Forever beyond his reach.  
  
"Yeah!" Duo said, putting his arm around her shoulders in a friendly manner. How Wufei wished he could touch her even so casually!  
  
Everyone left except Quatre, who told Trowa he'd catch up in a minute. Trowa nodded agreeably, pulling Quatre into a loose hug and kissing his forehead, not really caring that Wufei was watching. Wufei smiled wistfully, instead of the disgust he usually pretended when they got cuddly, wondering what it must be like to have the freedom to care like that. The courage to love like that.  
  
"Wufei, can we talk?" Quatre asked softly.  
  
"There is no point. I have to clean Nataku, My Goddess."  
  
Quatre watched him closely, seeing again that brief flash of pain. "Wufei, I don't know much about you, or what you went through before you came to us, you won't let me know. But I do know that sometimes I think you want to be with us. I don't know what is holding you back, but won't you please come? Just this once? Sledding?"  
  
Wufei ordered him away, but couldn't make his voice anything but gentle. He just couldn't be cold in the face of Quatre's caring, but he still couldn't go either. Quatre  
  
left quietly.  
  
Wufei took extra care with Nataku, seeing Quatre's smiling face superimposed over his Gundams.  
  
  
  
At dinner were more surprises. Liana Arryn, Riei's partner and friend, had also come up to the cabin. Catherine Bloom was there too. Everyone was listening to Duo's  
  
monologues about Christmas before it had been abandoned with interest. But Duo was struggling to recall things taught to him very long ago that he had mostly forgotten, so there were long pauses filled in by other conversations. Liana and Heero discussed the finer points of poisons while Heero was trying to get food into rather than onto his foster son. Riei occasionally chiding them for choosing such a topic during 'Christmas', and in front of the baby no less. Heero with a baby, Wufei wasn't quite sure what the world was coming to. Catherine, Trowa, and Quatre were cheerfully supporting Riei and interpreting Duo's comments amongst themselves, halfway planning to try and do Christmas this year. Quatre was also trying to sneak Danny away from Heero for a bit of cuddling whenever he thought Heero wasn't watching. Wufei admitted to himself that he loved the few times he'd gotten to watch Danny for Heero. He often wondered what his own child might  
  
have been like had Meiran lived. As it was, Wufei sat quietly eating his food, just listening to the others chatter, letting it flow over him like warm water.  
  
Later that evening Wufei excused himself and went to his room early while Duo and Catherine were looking for an ax to get a tree with. He was hoping to at least find some solitude.  
  
He didn't. A soft knock broke the silence of his room, and Riei entered without waiting for permission. Wufei nearly fell off his bed when he saw her. She looked slightly less distant than normal, sitting on his desk, her strange liquid gold eyes staring into his onyx ones.  
  
"Duo forgot one of the old traditions," she said abruptly. "About Christmas. Sometimes, if you wish really hard with all your heart for the right reasons, you get to make a wish for Christmas, and the magic of it will make it happen."  
  
"What?" he asked blankly.  
  
She shrugged. "I don't know, just something my father used to tell me. Every year I made a wish. Sometimes they really did come true. Quatre said something was bothering you. So, I thought you needed a little magic. Good night Wufei, and Merry Christmas."  
  
She was gone before he had a chance to reply. He walked to his desk, placing one hand hesitantly on the spot she had sat upon, in the warmth she had left behind. Slowly Wufei knelt almost reverently, keeping his hand on that warmth, as it seemed to fill his entire being.  
  
"Please, let the war end. Not just for political reasons, not for the power, not even the justice. Just let it stop so the dying can stop. So the hurting can stop. So that I can live again. That is my wish..." Wufei sat like that for hours, praying with all his heart to something nameless that he didn't fully understand, but believed. Believed, because of the other Gundam Pilots, because of his lost wife, because of his family, because of an assassin with golden eyes, because of a little boy with innocent eyes and a ready laugh, but most of all because of his heart, locked deep within it's metal prison. The heart that Riei had just touched, no matter how hard he tried to hide it away.  
  
He wished, for all the right reasons.  
  
And somewhere, something far away, listened. 


End file.
